Peter J. Orvetti is a political journalist living in Washington, D.C. He has been an Internet writer and editor since 1997, and has been published in many American newspapers including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Washington Times. His stories can be found at http://www.orvetti.com/alternate_history. This is the second fiction that he has decided to publish. .

The young man dressed in red, white, and blue crouched on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, scribbling hastily into a worn notebook. "It remains my personal plan to assassinate Richard Nixon by pistol. It will be bold and dramatic and dynamic and all the world will know of me. I could not get to Richard Nixon in Canada in April but I will try and succeed at home in America." It was past midnight, but Arthur Bremer was fully awake. All through the day, May 4, he had paced the National Mall, warily eyeing the demonstrators who seemed to be camped out there permanently. "They're here to get in my way, just like in Ottawa," Bremer had thought. Too wired to rest, Bremer picked a perch and waited for the evening to come. He was hungry. "Where can you get food in this city at midnight?" he wondered. He scratched a few more lines in the notebook and started back down the steps. "The air is good tonight, Manolo," the hunched man said as he briskly took to the first steps of the Memorial. "Good to get out of there, get out and see the city. Inspiration, that's what we need more of." Manolo Sanchez said nothing, and simply followed two steps behind Nixon as the President ascended. Sanchez thought these night walks were dangerous, but since that first one two years ago, Nixon could not be dissuaded. The jaunts had been largely kept secret from the press and public, though Haldeman knew. Haldeman knew everything. Sanchez had been ordered to secretly carry a gun on those nights when the President's wanderlust overtook him. "Hello, young man," Nixon said as Bremer passed him. Bremer raised his glance from the ground and gave the 37th president a startled stare. "Nice night out, eh? Beautiful place. Great man, Lincoln. Great man. Where you from?" "Uh… Milwaukee." "Packers fan? Not the same since Lombardi died." Bremer struggled to get a handle on the turn of events. The prey he had sought, that had been so elusive, now stood right here. "What's that notebook? Want an autograph?" said Nixon with a smile. "A penny for your thoughts?" said Bremer, reaching inside his coat. "How's that?" asked Nixon. "A penny for your thoughts?" Bremer repeated, and fired. Nixon stumbled. "Cocksucker!" the President gasped. Sanchez yanked out his own gun and shot Bremer three times. Bremer's Charter Arms .38 tumbled to the steps. Sanchez called the White House, and in an instant the Washington night was pierced by sirens. Haldeman thought for moment, then dialed. He didn't call Agnew first -- the first call went to Liddy. A speechless nation woke up on the morning of May 5, 1972, to learn of the stunning night slaying of Richard Nixon and the new presidency of Spiro Theodore Agnew. The former Maryland governor had picked up the phone at the Naval Observatory on the fourth ring, and had hastily taken the presidential oath of office some twenty minutes after Nixon was confirmed dead. Early reports suggested that Communist and Maoist materials had been found in assassin Arthur Herman Bremer's Milwaukee apartment, as well as leaflets for Democratic presidential hopeful George McGovern. President Agnew, looking wired and wary, addressed the nation from the Oval Office at 9:00 a.m. He quoted James Garfield's comment on the assassination of President Lincoln that "God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives," and added that "America has always thrived on adversity and so I can only foresee only good for this country, despite my personal sorrow." After comparing Nixon and Lincoln for their roles in the stewardship of a divided nation, the new President said the assassin seemed to be a "zealot of radic-lib causes." In his first days in office, Agnew's chief concern was the upcoming presidential election, suddenly thrown into turmoil. Though Nixon's team had wanted McGovern to be the Democratic nominee, an April poll had a surprising 36% tie in a three-way contest, with Wallace as an independent taking 18%, almost all of it from Nixon, with the rest undecided. After Nixon's death, an early poll showed nothing but confusion. While sympathy boosted Agnew to an 80% approval rating, poll respondents made it clear that that did not necessarily mean they would vote for him. Agnew took just 34% in the first post-assassination poll, with McGovern at 30% and Wallace climbing to 20%. The number of undecided voters continued to grow. As May, and the primary season, continued, Agnew called in Liddy, Attorney General John Mitchell, White House counsel John Dean, and Jeb Magruder of what had been the Nixon re-election campaign. No Republican had risen to challenge Agnew's expected nomination for president, and Agnew was focused on the Democrats. "I want the full package," the President announced. "The full package, sir?" said a confused Magruder. "I want you to give me whatever you can to disrupt the Democrats and Wallace. These polls are going to get worse, not better, and we'll end up with a damned hippie in the White House. What have you got?" Liddy briefed the President on the remnants of Operation Gemstone. Liddy had first presented a plan the previous fall that had included the drugging and abduction of anti-Nixon activists, the infiltration of spies into the leading Democratic campaigns, the planting of bugs in the Democrats' campaign planes and buses, and other surveillance. In passing, Liddy mentioned an upcoming operation at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, to which Agnew nodded in assent. "That's all good, but what else?" said the President. "Well, we had one more, but we haven't acted on it yet. I call it Turquoise. We already have the blueprints of the Democratic convention hall in Miami Beach, including all the support machinery. What we'd do is get a team of commandos – Cubans, reliable men I know – to sneak in and sabotage the air conditioning. It will easily get up to 110, 120 degrees inside, with the crowd and the July heat. Imagine how that will look on television." Mitchell smiled and Agnew chuckled. "Do it," said Agnew. "Get the money, from wherever, and do it. Now, how about a vice president?" The 25th Amendment, ratified just five years earlier, required the president to nominate a vice president to be confirmed by Congress. With the election coming, it seemed inevitable that whomever Agnew selected would also be the Republican vice presidential nominee, and candidates were already clamoring for the job. Agnew had been seen as a moderate while governor of Maryland, winning votes in predominantly Democratic areas, signing open-housing and environmental protection laws, and working to repeal old racist statutes. But as Nixon's vice presidential candidate, Agnew had tacked to the right and since 1968 he was best known for his caustic attacks on liberals, intellectuals, activists, and the media. It was unclear, then, just which way Agnew should go to create a balanced ticket. There were rumors Wallace was angling for the vice presidency on the Democratic side, and his operatives were suggesting that he would pledge his delegates – probably enough to win the nomination – to either McGovern or Hubert Humphrey in exchange for the number two job. But McGovern's team had made it clear that McGovern would sooner lose than run with Wallace, and Humphrey, who had first come to national attention by giving a pro-civil rights speech at the 1948 Democratic Convention that led the Dixiecrats to bolt, seemed equally queasy at the prospect. Agnew knew it was likely Wallace would again run as a third-party candidate. Agnew had mulled offering the vice presidency to Wallace himself, which would eliminate Wallace as a threat and almost certainly mean victory. But there was a difference between picking a vice presidential candidate and picking someone to nominate before Congress. Wallace could be elected, but not confirmed. Agnew needed a candidate palatable to Congress but also likely to entice Southern voters in November. UN Ambassador George Bush was less than subtle about his interest in the job, as was Nelson Rockefeller, but neither could give Agnew the support he needed. Ronald Reagan would overshadow the new president, and Barry Goldwater could win the South but might drag down Agnew everywhere else. Three weeks to the day after becoming president, Agnew nominated John Tower, a Texas senator at the end of his second term who had voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Tower nomination dominated the political news as the Democratic primaries continued their denouement. Though Wallace won the May 16 primaries in Maryland and Michigan, McGovern was far ahead of both him and Humphrey, and the South Dakotan swept the remaining contests. McGovern ended the primary season with about 1,200 delegates publicly committed to him, with Humphrey a distant second with about 500, and Wallace at about 400, and seemed to have enough support to claim a first-ballot nomination. But the road would not be entirely smooth. Humphrey's forces were mulling a credentials challenge to some McGovern delegates that could force the contest to a second ballot. Even more ominously for McGovern, some top Democrats were quietly making overtures to Hyannis. Agnew was slowly ticking upward in the polls, and Wallace was taking a substantial bite of the labor vote from McGovern. While Wallace would steal some southern support from Agnew, the damage to the GOP ticket looked to be minimal. Party Chairman Larry O'Brien, a JFK man, knew the Democrats could defeat President Agnew, but as the new president entered his second month in office, anxious Democrats saw the election slipping away. But 40-year-old Ted Kennedy had deflected supporters who had wanted him to step in in 1968 after his brother Robert's assassination, and three years after the Chappaquiddick incident, he was again reluctant to run. The congressional debate on Tower eclipsed all other Washington news in June, including a little-noticed break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate on Saturday the 17th. While Tower's eventual confirmation was never in doubt, Democrats hoped to bog down the nomination and stymie the launch of the Agnew-Tower ticket for as long as possible. With the convention season approaching, the House voted to confirm Tower 387-36 on June 26, and the Senate concurred 95-2 on June 30. Vice President Tower was sworn in in the East Room of the White House at noon on Saturday, July 1. The Tower confirmation gave the GOP another boost, and as the Democrats gathered in Miami Beach on July 10, polls had Agnew at 40% to McGovern's 31% and Wallace's 19%, with one voter in 10 undecided. Democrats began to feel the need for a good show in Miami in order to reverse the tide. They would not get it. G. Gordon Liddy dispatched the Turquoise team to shut down the air conditioning, and as the Humphrey credentials challenge pressed ahead, America saw an increasingly sweaty, surly, and disorganized Democratic party. The old party bosses had been shut out by the McGovern-led reformers, and they were resentful of their likely nominee. With the party seeming to be headed toward snatching defeat from a possible victory, they began to collude with the Humphrey camp to force a second round of voting. On the first ballot, Humphrey backers pressed for votes for Kennedy, while at the same time, black McGovern supporters were urged to vote for New York Rep. Shirley Chisholm, ostensibly as a protest against Wallace, who had arrived with a large following in order to play to the national television cameras before moving on to launch another third-party candidacy. The McGovern team fought to stem the tide, but the party machine saw a way to take back the convention from the reformers and possibly salvage the election. With defections to Kennedy, Chisholm, and a handful of others, McGovern was pushed below 1,500 votes, with Sen. Henry Jackson, the Washington State hawk, next with 525, Kennedy and Wallace drawing about 400 each, and Chisholm finishing with about 250. Humphrey's supporters, who had voted for Kennedy, waited for the next round. As the tallies dragged on, the heat inside the building became too much for many. Television viewers were horrified to see delegates slumped in chairs, some even passing out. A second ballot created another stalemate, with Humphrey back in the mix. Before the third round, Kennedy took the stage to make it clear he did not want the nomination. Wallace, enjoying the chaos, entertained fleeting hopes that he might be offered the number two spot in exchange for his delegates. Instead, Humphrey and Jackson held a one-on-one hour-long meeting in Humphrey's hotel suite, and on the third ballot, the Democrats again selected Hubert H. Humphrey as their nominee, with Henry Jackson his running mate. The bland ticket that stumbled out of the fractious convention did little to impress undecided voters. On the American Independent Party ticket, Wallace joined with John Schmitz, a Republican congressman from Orange County, California, and John Birch Society activist. Eugene McCarthy, the antiwar hero who had left the Senate the year before, had fared poorly at the Democratic convention and accepted the presidential nomination of the People's Party, with famed pediatrician Benjamin Spock as his running mate. McGovern campaign manager Gary Hart took over the McCarthy campaign, hiring a frizzy-haired young Arkansas political activist named Bill Clinton as his deputy. Voters seemed to appreciate the calm and order of the August Republican convention, also held in Miami Beach. The event turned into a testimonial for Nixon, lauded as a peacemaker for his diplomatic efforts with the Soviets and with China. Members of Nixon's family offered reflections on Nixon, and Pat Nixon, the former First Lady, made a brief speech at the end of the first night of the convention. The delegates ratified the Agnew-Tower ticket without drama. From then on, the campaign was anticlimactic. Wallace clawed at Humphrey's labor support, while disaffected McGovern supporters and peace activists drifted to the McCarthy effort. The Democrats were left without a strong issue to rally their supporters. Meanwhile, Agnew discussed his plans to carry on in the tradition of Nixon, "the fallen man of peace," by moving forward on détente with the Soviets and stronger relations with China. On Election Night, the GOP ticket crushed the Democrats, with Agnew carrying 44 states worth 473 electoral votes. Wallace, who won four Southern states, actually outperformed Humphrey in the Electoral College; the former vice president carried just Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, and his home state of Minnesota. Even so, Agnew failed to win an absolute majority of the popular vote. The Agnew-Tower ticket took 48% of the 80 million votes cast, with the Humphrey-Jackson team far behind at 27%. Wallace and Schmitz won over 14 million votes, mostly in the South and in labor-heavy states, while the McCarthy-Spock peace ticket finished just shy of five million. On November 8, the day after the election, Agnew ordered a renewal of the bombing of North Vietnam, with a particular focus on Hanoi. Every day for a week, the strength of the US assault, Operation Linebacker II, was increased, leading to criticism at the UN from the Soviet Union, France, and other Security Council nations. Over the course of 10 days, more than 700 B-52s bombed the North, with nearly 20,000 tons of bombs dropped. On November 19, the North Vietnamese said they would return to the negotiating table in Paris if Agnew halted the bombing. While Agnew considered keeping up the raids to further weaken Hanoi's resolve, Secretary of State William Rogers convinced him to cease the actions. Talks in Paris resumed on December 1 and an agreement was reached some three weeks later. The so-called "Christmas Accords" were signed on December 24, 1972. On Christmas Day, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird announced the end of the military draft. When he went to the Capitol to take the oath of office to begin his first full term, President Agnew's prospects seemed bright. With the Christmas Accords, Agnew's approval rating again moved up toward 80%. Since he had succeeded Nixon more than halfway through Nixon's second term, Agnew was eligible to run again in 1976 and plans were already being laid out. Any fears that Operation Gemstone might haunt the president began to dissolve. During the campaign, the increasingly desperate Humphrey had tried to exploit the break-in at the Watergate headquarters, but the issue failed to gain traction, with just a sole rookie Washington Post reporter from the Metro desk giving it much attention. After a decade of war, protests, and the assassination of two presidents, the nation was in no mood for further tumult. That lone reporter, Bob Woodward, turned to another angle. In early 1972, he had received a call from Mark Felt, a top FBI man Woodward referred to as "My Friend" in his notebooks. His friend had told Woodward that Agnew, then vice president, had received a bribe of $2,500 in cash, which he placed in his desk drawer. Woodward had passed the story on to Post reporter Richard Cohen, who told the green Woodward that the idea was "preposterous." Woodward spent a fruitless day trying to chase down the story, then gave up. But with the Watergate story seeming to be dead, Woodward sought to revive the story. He began contacting Felt on a regular basis, keeping his name quiet. After Woodward's false starts on Watergate, his editors were reluctant to let him follow the leads, but Woodward persisted. Woodward discovered that the US Attorney for Baltimore had been investigating the latter for some time, with possible charges ranging from accepting thousands of dollars in bribes while county executive, governor, and vice president, to extortion and tax fraud. When the story hit the Post in early July, Agnew called it a "bunch of damned lies." He foolishly ordered the dismissal of the Baltimore prosecutor, George Beall, which Attorney General Elliot Richardson refused to do. The attempted shutdown of the investigation only made Agnew look guilty, which was far from clear at the time. The prosecutor's brother, John Glenn Beall, a Republican senator from Maryland, quietly met with the President and told him that the charges were serious. He suggested Agnew think about resigning the presidency. When it became evident that Agnew had continued taking bribes until shortly before assuming the presidency, Agnew came up with a surprising plan to survive. Preempting the increasingly hungry Democrats, President Agnew asked House Speaker Carl Albert to launch a full investigation, hoping that an impeachment bid would drag on and fizzle. But the president had burned through the good will that came with his election victory, and polls showed that a growing majority of Americans believed the charges. The increasingly belligerent Agnew vowed he would not resign. By September, however, it was evident a wide bipartisan majority in the House would vote to impeach, and that a Senate conviction seemed certain to follow. As Agnew's popularity fell below 20%, dozens of senators publicly declared their intentions to vote against Agnew. On the night of October 6, Agnew met in the Oval Office with Vice President Tower, and told Tower he would resign in exchange for a pardon. Though by this time a Tower presidency seemed likely one way or another, Tower knew that Agnew's alternative was a bitter, slash-and-burn war against his assailants in Congress that would certainly doom Tower's own hopes for 1976. Tower reluctantly accepted Agnew's offer. On the morning of October 10, 1973, Spiro Agnew's letter of resignation was delivered to Secretary of State Rogers. The 17-month Agnew Administration was at an end. John Tower's presidency was a disaster from the start. With Agnew now vulnerable to arrest, Tower could not postpone the pardon. Tower considered just stiffing Agnew on the deal, but he knew Agnew would not keep quiet about it if he did. Hoping to get it over with and out of the way, Tower delivered the pardon after sunset on Saturday, October 13, hoping for as little attention as possible. But the uproar was immediate and deafening -- and gave the Soviet Union an unexpected opening in the Middle East, where the Yom Kippur War was raging. With the US essentially sidelined by domestic calamity, the USSR accepted Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's request for support, which came in the form of weapons sent through Czechoslovakia. By the end of the month, the permanent Soviet presence in Egypt had been doubled, to 40,000 "advisers," creating yet another standoff line in the Cold War. Former National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, who had fled the White House when it first seemed Agnew might not survive, joined forces with Henry Jackson, who was already deeply into planning for the 1976 campaign. In January 1977, Jackson became the fourth man to take the chair in the Oval Office in the space of five years, with Kissinger as Secretary of State. Jackson's longtime defense adviser Richard Perle, age 36, became Secretary of Defense, with another Jackson insider, Paul Wolfowitz, as his deputy. On May 4, 1983, President Jackson delivered the keynote address at the dedication of the Richard Milhous Nixon Memorial near the Tidal Basin in Washington. The memorial featured a bronze sculpture by Robert Berk, of Nixon standing and gazing at a globe. Above Nixon were these words from his first inaugural address: "The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker." Among those attending the dedication were Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and China's Deng Xiaoping, who was in Washington for meetings with Jackson. Former President Agnew did not attend.



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